steady state

Arrived at the lake late, very late. I just had difficulty leaving work, with all the things going on.

High temperature but very low wind, resulting in a lake which was not choppy but there were these longer waves caused by all the recreation boats, tourist ferries, and police speedboats doing “training”. The police training is quite interesting. I think they specialize in rescuing long-legged blond women, because all I see them do is speeding up and down the lake carrying young, blond women.

I heard an anecdote recently, about a sculler from the other club, who was stopped by the police because he was rowing on the part of the river that is forbidden for “sport”. When asked what he was doing, he said he was a drug smuggler who was carrying a load of crystal meth to Veverská Bityška.

Wrong answer, of course.

He had to row back to the club, police following him a few meters behind in their speed boat. This must have been an interesting scene, a relaxed, slowly sculling single sculler, followed by two guys in a police boat. Back the club he had to show is ID, and was thoroughly lectured. That was it.

Anyway, yesterday I was not going to do any smuggling. I decided to do a 1km trial. My plan is to do these regularly to get used to the pain and be able to rate up through it. The dreaded “500m” bite, as so well described in this blog.

Also a good opportunity to experiment with CrewNerds spoken start command.

Warming up: a few 10 stroke sets at higher rates (25, 30, 32spm). Turning in Rokle. Start practice: first one stroke, then two, then three, etc. Then a slow row along the nude beach to the start.

“Ready – Attention – Row”.

I took off at 35spm but quickly lowered it to 31spm. The plan was to hold 1:50, and increase the rate every time I would see a substantial deviation.

The plan was quickly binned. It was very difficult to hold 1:55.

In the second half I started to have difficulty keeping my line and ended up rowing in the buoys a couple of times. In the final 100m I was rowing in the wake of the tourist ferry.

Excuses. Excuses.

The end time was a 3:52. Still a good result given the heat but not the 3:40 that I am chasing this year. Perhaps it isn’t realistic?

During the row I was convinced there was a strong headwind. When I stopped, it didn’t seem so strong anymore. Still the Italian flag on the fireworks pontoon was flying evidence that I had been rowing into a headwind.

It was warm and there was a headwind

After the 1km I needed a few minutes to recollect myself, then I did a 6km steady state. After the row I went for a swim in the lake. It was nice and warm in the top 50cm, but below that it is still quite cold. First time swimming in the lake, this season.

I traveled to Brussels on Monday afternoon, arriving at 9pm. No training on Tuesday, just mental endurance training during long meetings. Traveled home in the evening, arriving at 11:30pm.

Wednesday

I had some difficulty to reach the rowing club. It is the annual fireworks festival, and yesterday’s location was our lake. So police was blocking the road to the rowing club, not allowing anyone in, I guess to avoid a traffic and parking chaos. I tried to argue with the police man that I was going to the rowing club and would be parking on private property. He asked if I could prove that … Apparently a bag with sports clothes and rowing club stickers on my car wasn’t enough.

So I had to drive around and use the back road, which took another 25 minutes (because of the traffic chaos created by the police closing off the lake). I was now under time pressure, because it was already past 6pm and I would have a conference call at 7:30.

Steady state in the double with Radek. We just did 2×12 minutes because we didn’t have time for more. The second 12 minute interval was interrupted by a short phone call that I had to take.

After the row, we quickly washed the boat and put it in the rack. After that I had literally 30 seconds left before the start of the conference call.

This morning I went for the annual medical checkup. It’s still not compulsory but I find it interesting.

Morning urine: OK

Blood: Waiting for lab results

Fat: 7.9% (0.1% more than a year ago). A bit more fat on the belly and on the thighs. All within the measurement error if you ask me.

Weight: 71.8kg (0.2kg more than a year ago)

Lung vital capacity: 5.45 L – exceeding last year’s value by 2% but I believe this is all in the measurement error. Anyway, I was told it is a good value.

The doctor recommended to see a physio more often (well I never go, so perhaps I should start) because of some hard spots in my back muscles. Also she recommended to strengthen my lats. Funny, one would think that rowing would strengthen them.

Should do more stretching as well.

Blood pressure before exercise OK. Electrocardiogram OK.

Then it was time for the spiro test on the cycle. Before the test, I asked what my last year’s results were. Apparently I stopped at 355W and 182 bpm heart rate. OK. Challenge.

I reached 370W, at roughly the same HR (don’t remember by “heart” now, so will have to wait for email with test results).

But the doctor didn’t like that I had a slightly high blood pressure at one point during the exercise. Also they didn’t like how long it took (10 minutes) to drop. Hm.

Arriving at work, I had two cups of strong coffee, than sat down and measured myself. Values were OK. I think the high values during the test were an anomaly, or perhaps some fatigue, or “white coat hypertension”. The doctor asked if I had stress at work. 🙂

Difficult to judge how stressful their work is, but it looked more relaxed than what I do. 🙂 🙂

Anyhow, will keep measuring and looking forward to the complete test results.

What stresses me out is that my single is still in Hodonín. I agreed to have it on the second trailer load, assuming that he would turn around to pick up the remaining boats on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, but this didn’t happen. God knows when he will pick them up. It’s time to buy that small trailer.

I wrote the manufacturer today. I am ordering the same trailer that I saw. Just adding one small cross-beam on the midde layer, to make it easier to carry doubles and pairs. See the yellow dot:

The day after a race is a strange day. After a successful raid like last weekend, your head is full of all the wonderful things. There is no point in sharing with colleagues, though. They couldn’t care less.

At the same time, the body is exhausted and the mind is tired from lack of sleep and the long driving. It has difficulty to focus on the problems at hand. There are photos to be looked at again and again.

There is the weather playing it’s tricks. Monday was one of the most beautiful days to row of this spring. Sunny but not too hot and almost no wind.

The day after racing is the day where you should not evaluate. Not yet. You should do your work and when it’s done, drive to the rowing club if you feel like it.

Give the boat a good wash. It’s dirty from the trip and from being stored outside on a sandy beach for three days.

Chat with the people at the rowing club, but do not evaluate. Yet.

Then, if you feel like it, get on the water towards sunset time and do a gentle row. I did just that. In the end I did 10 km and I felt more refreshed after it than before. I didn’t focus on anything. No technique drills. No structured L4 training. Just rowing and looking at the sunset.

A first row with Radek. We launched at 6, took my double “Orca” on a lake that was relatively quiet, but not entirely without chop.

Pick Drills to warm up.

There was another double on the lake, who launched together with us. As they have been training together forever, and this was the first time in ages that Radek and I sit together, we turned a little earlier to avoid rowing next to them. Rowing next to them would probably have woken up our competitive spirits and would ruin what was supposed to be a good technique / steady state workout.

Did 2x12min, which is one lake length down, one lake length up. As we had turned early and the first leg was with tailwind, I ran out of lake with 15 seconds to go. Tant pis.

On the tailwind leg, the other double seemed to be slightly faster than we, rowing about 500m behind us. On the headwind leg, even though they were doing 26spm and we did 18spm, we had the same speed. Nice!

Then we did 4km of cooling down with technique drills.

“King of the mountain” followed by “Pimanov” (aka Top Quarter)

Pause after tap-down

Square blade rowing

I asked them how it went. They were happy that they had done a “steady state” 6km at 26spm. Interesting. When I do a 6km I count it as “hard distance”. May be just a nomenclature confusion.